Memento Mori

by Ruth Downie

  Pertinax grunted.

  “I can see why you believe he was the killer, sir.” Ruso paused to let that settle before he began again. “And I think at the time he felt strongly enough to do it. But I’ve found evidence that suggests he can’t possibly be guilty.” He was aware of Tilla sitting very still beside him as he left another pause, hopefully long enough to spark Pertinax’s curiosity without being so long that it annoyed him. “When Valens saw them alone together,” he said, “Serena and Terentius were in the temple courtyard. Catus saw him there, holding a knife. If he was going to attack, that’s the time he would have done it. Straight after Catus had gone. But there’s another witness who saw Serena and Terentius later on, over at the burning inn. Valens was already at the Traveler’s Repose when news came of the fire, and after that he was helping with the injured, so there was no time when he could have attacked Serena. Whatever he felt when he saw them together, sir, he didn’t act on it.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Pertinax told him. “They’ve already tried this nonsense about the witness with me. I told them: I was at the fire. I know what it was like. Madness. I couldn’t have told you who else was there, and neither could anybody else.”

  Ruso swallowed. It hadn’t occurred to him that his news might have already reached Pertinax and been dismissed. Still, at least the old man was considering the practicalities of how the murder had been committed. Ruso allowed himself to hope.

  “Besides, it doesn’t prove a thing,” Pertinax said. “Valens could have found my girl later.”

  “There’s also the evidence of the ring,” said Ruso, now proceeding with caution. “Have you been told about that?”

  Pertinax’s grunt gave no clue as to whether he had or not. Ruso was conscious of Tilla sitting very still beside him as he said, “Terentius left town in a tearing hurry that night. He wasn’t much of a sailor but he gave a valuable ring to a slave in return for help with stealing a boat in the dark. I’d say that’s more than a man trying to dodge an angry husband. That’s a desperate man trying to avoid the consequences of murder.”

  “Or a man who knows what happened,” retorted Pertinax, “and is too ashamed to admit he abandoned my girl in the middle of the night.” His voice trailed off, then he gathered his thoughts again. “You’ll have to try harder than that. If you’re wanting me to withdraw the prosecution, you’re wasting your time. I suppose that pompous little squirt of a priest put you up to this.”

  “Sir—”

  “And don’t you get up on your hind legs again about my grandsons. If it wasn’t for them, I’d have tracked their father down and run him through weeks ago. But I won’t have them growing up thinking there was any doubt. I want everything done properly. I want his lawyer to have a say in court. I want him tried and found guilty in public. And I’m getting no help from the idiots here.” His voice turned to mockery. “ ‘Beyond our jurisdiction, sir.’ ‘It won’t bring her back, you know.’ ‘Don’t upset yourself, Centurion.’ ‘Don’t upset yourself,’ my arse! Did you know they offered me money toward the tomb?”

  “I didn’t know that, sir.”

  “I know a bribe when I see one. I said, you’re not dealing with some wet-behind-the-ears recruit here. You’re dealing with the chief centurion and the camp prefect of the Twentieth Valeria Victrix. My lads died so that you lot could have your hot baths and your fancy oils and your processions, and I’m going to the governor.”

  No wonder the chief priest had left it to Ruso to present the fresh evidence to Pertinax. Doubtless the trial of a Roman citizen for murder really was way beyond the authority of the local magistrates, but he could understand Pertinax’s fury when these pampered officials had tried to buy the family’s silence. He thought of the desperate struggles Terentius’s ancient landlord had survived. Of the brief but bloody rebellion in the North that followed Hadrian’s accession. He had treated many of the casualties himself, and even after the nightmares had faded, he could still be caught unawares by echoes of voices that had fallen silent long before their time.

  Pertinax glanced at him. “I suppose you came running down here thinking you’d save your pal from a mad father out for revenge.”

  “Pretty much, sir,” Ruso admitted. He felt as though he had shrunk while the old man was speaking.

  “I’ll take revenge if I have to. But first I’m asking for justice.” Pertinax sat back and surveyed them both. “So. You said yourself he was capable of murder. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Ruso confessed. “He was next door in the Traveler’s Repose when I got here, but he left last night.”

  Pertinax’s voice rose to something like its usual volume. “I knew all along where he was. I’m asking what you’ve done with him since.”

  Ruso blinked. “You admit that you knew?”

  “Course I did. Only needed a bit longer with him being too scared to come out, and we’d have made it to the trial. But you had to interfere, and somebody else found out where he was hiding. Whoever had a go at you was trying to finish him off. Where is he?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me where he was going, sir,” said Ruso, trying to adjust his thinking to this new revelation. No wonder Pertinax had been so confident that a trial would take place. “So you can tell your man to leave us alone now.”

  Pertinax frowned. “What man?”

  Tilla said, “The spy sitting at the table across the road.”

  Pertinax lumbered to his feet and peered out of the window.

  Ruso joined him. His attention was caught by a couple of figures meandering toward the river with what looked like a black sheep between them, and a boy trailing along behind. From the way each man was holding on to a horn, it looked as though the sheep was doing the steering. Ruso’s experience of sheep rearing with his in-laws had been brief, but even he could see this was not a normal way of going about things.

  The spy looked up from his beer to follow the uneven progress of men and animal. “The old boy at the table,” Ruso said. “With the moustache. He’s been watching the door here off and on since yesterday evening.”

  “Not on my orders,” said Pertinax. “Never seen him before in my life. If I’d sent someone, you wouldn’t know he was there.”

  Tilla said, “Then who is he? How did you know where Valens was? Who attacked my husband?” but Pertinax was already leaving.

  Ruso followed him out onto the landing. “Sir, about the business with my wife and—”

  “That woman of yours is a troublemaker. Always has been.”

  “She’s concerned that Gleva—”

  “None of your business.”

  “Sir, if Gleva’s giving you medicine—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Do I look like a man who needs medicine?”

  “You look tired.”

  “Are you trying to sell me something?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’ve got people looking for Valens. If I can’t find him in time, there’ll be no trial. That should please you.”

  “The presumption of guilt doesn’t please me,” Ruso told him. “I’m still looking for Terentius. And Valens might come back.”

  Pertinax snorted. “I offered him a chance to have his say in court. This is his answer.” He lurched toward the door. “Not what I’d planned, but at least this way we can keep the details quiet. All the boys need to know is that he ran off and left them. I’ll find him myself, and when I do, I’ll deal out justice for my girl.” He paused at the top of the stairs and turned to face Ruso. “Are you going to help?”

  Ruso took a deep breath. “No, sir,” he said, cursing Valens for making him feel like a traitor whatever he did. “I’m sorry for you, but I’m not.”

  The sound of Pertinax’s uneven gait faded away down the stairs. Ruso sat on the bed and bent forward, massaging the back of his neck with both hands. “That didn’t go quite the way I’d intended.”

  Tilla said, “If it was not him who sent that man last night, who was it?”
/>   “I don’t know.”

  “This story about the ring—why did you not tell me?”

  “I was going to,” he told her, “after we’d finished discussing your hair.”

  From the next room they could hear Mara making the first experimental calls that announced she was awake. There would be louder protests if nobody responded. He suspected Tilla was relieved to have an excuse to leave.

  Alone, he stared at the flattened surface of the bedside rug and wondered if he had been right about anything at all. Nothing had turned out the way he had expected. Until last night he had refused to believe that Valens was capable of murder. But then Valens himself had admitted that he could, and would, have done it if he had not been interrupted. Given enough provocation, Ruso supposed any man would be as capable of killing off the battlefield as on it. Valens’s knife did not match the wound he had described, but as the sole medically experienced examiner of the body, Valens could have lied to suit himself.

  There were witnesses who’d seen him helping to treat the injured, but at some point he must have gone back to his lodgings at the Repose. Pertinax was right: If Terentius and Serena had separated after they were seen, she could have been wandering alone and unprotected during all the milling about after the fire. Valens had denied attacking her, but Valens had lied before. Now he had fled, and although Ruso could never share Pertinax’s view of him, he was beginning to understand it. He could see why the old centurion might have sent an assassin last night.

  The trouble was, he hadn’t. So who had tried to kill Valens?

  And then there was this business of Terentius and the boat. It was hard to see what would induce a man who couldn’t swim to risk his life on the river in the dark. But perhaps Ruso had been too eager to interpret his dangerous flight as a sign of guilt. Terentius had stepped into someone else’s marriage. He had taken on a major building project that his mentor had refused to touch. He was not a man who was averse to taking risks.

  The door to the annex opened and a small head appeared at just above floor level. “Here she is!” announced Tilla brightly.

  He leaned down and patted the rug. “Come to Pa,” he invited, glad to have something simpler to think about.

  “Pa!” Mara set off at an enthusiastic crawl, only to come to a sudden and apparently puzzling halt as she knelt on her own tunic. Tilla bent down and lifted her up by her hands, and the rest of the distance was covered in a sort of floating dance as Mara raised each knee in succession while her mother carried her across the floor.

  “Clever girl,” he told her.

  Tilla lifted her higher and handed her over. “Hold her up.”

  He lowered her onto his knee, winced at the sudden feeling of cold, and lifted her off again. “She’s wet.”

  “I know,” said Tilla, deftly untying the soggy cloths and reaching under the bed. “Let’s show your Pa how you sit on the pot like a big girl!”

  The big girl seemed less interested in showing Pa anything than in staring at her mother’s hair.

  Tilla patted the tangle of braids. “I don’t think she likes it, either.”

  “It’s fine,” said Ruso, hoping his wife would soon dismantle it of her own accord.

  From inside the cupboard where the cloths were stored, Tilla said, “Did you really think you could make Pertinax change his mind?”

  “I thought—” He stopped. “I should have known better.” For a mad moment he had hoped that, by conceding the possibility of Valens’s guilt, he might engage Pertinax in a joint search for the truth. It had looked—briefly—as though he might succeed. Instead, he had handed over a gift to the prosecution: Even the best friend of the accused says he is capable of murder!

  On reflection, the only time Pertinax had ever been known to change his mind was halfway up a landslide when he was too weak to argue. Now Ruso had been given a sharp reminder that Serena’s father was far less of a blustering old fool than he looked.

  Cloth in hand, Tilla leaned sideways against the window to gaze along the street. “Neena is here with the lunch.”

  “At last.”

  She turned away from the window and laid the cloth on the bed to fold it. “There is something very wrong in that man’s house,” she said. “I am worried about those little boys.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “But he’s right: It’s none of our business.”

  “Then we must find somebody whose business it is,” she said.

  31

  It was foolish to feel responsible for a married woman who was soon to become a mother for the second time, but Tilla could not push away the thought that if she did not go across to the oil shop as she had promised, then Virana would find some excuse to desert her post and turn up at the Mercury, and sooner or later surely the Old Misery’s patience would run out.

  The old man glanced up from his beer as she stepped out into the street, and for a moment their eyes met. She looked away, feeling her cheeks flush, and reminded herself that there was no way the nosy old drunk could know that they had mistaken him for a spy.

  Still, whatever his reasons, he was definitely watching her. Rather than walk past and give him a better view, she turned right and set off down the narrow street toward the river. She would take the long way around to the oil shop, following the path that led past the stable and along by the riverside vegetable plots.

  Ahead of her she was surprised to see the men who had been walking on either side of the black ewe. A meandering line of trampled plants led to where they were now standing in the middle of a lettuce patch while the ewe lay at their feet, its head raised as it gazed around with mild interest at the view. Surely livestock should be chased out of vegetable plots, not allowed to lie in them and mangle the crop? It was such an odd sight that Tilla paused to watch. The ewe stretched out its neck and took a mouthful of lettuce.

  She was wondering what the gardener would make of it when she heard footsteps behind her and a gruff voice told her “Move along please, miss” on the grounds that this was private business. She murmured an apology and walked on, wondering what sort of private business they could possibly be carrying out. It must be some sort of ceremony, but it seemed an odd time of year to be doing it. Normal people would either ask the gods to bless their planting before they put the seeds in or give thanks after they had taken off the harvest. Normal people would not let a sheep squash the lettuce before the family had a chance to pick and eat it.

  Dismissing yet another strange Roman custom from her mind, she made her way toward the oil shop, pondering the far more important problem of how to approach the only person who could help her to keep the boys safe.

  If only Valens had waited, the way forward would have been much simpler than her husband seemed to think. At least, as long as he had survived the mysterious assassin. The safest place for the boys would be with their father. If she could have found some way to persuade Albanus to take them out of Pertinax’s house, Valens could have collected them, and the remains of the shattered little family could all have fled together. Of course, there would have been a fuss about Valens’s return to military service after his absence without leave, but Valens was good at charming his way out of awkward places. Even if his charm had failed, he could have changed his name, gone to some other part of the empire and started again. People did these things. She had more or less done it herself. Once a slave with a name the Romans could not pronounce: now Tilla, respectable wife of a former legionary medical officer.

  Turning left into the street that led to the oil shop, she pushed aside the thought that Valens might have begun his fresh start already and left his boys behind.

  If only he had waited, he could have taken them with him. No doubt he would have had to knock Albanus on the head and tie him up, so it would look as though the tutor had been overpowered trying to defend the boys, but Albanus would forgive him. Valens was an old comrade, and old comrades stuck together like bull’s glue. Which was why she had been amazed to hear her husband say, in front
of Serena’s father, that Valens was capable of murder.

  Whatever complicated plan he’d had in mind at the time, it had gone wrong. Then he had tried to warn Pertinax about Gleva, but he had failed there too: It was plain that the old man had no idea what she was really like and would not hear a word spoken against her.

  Now, with their father gone, the boys would have to stay with their grandfather, under the same roof as Gleva. Albanus would have to be prepared to whisk them away at the first sign of danger, and then … She was not sure what would happen then. Some family would have to take them in and hide them from Pertinax, and the chances of persuading her husband that they should be that family were very slim indeed.

  Still, it was no use worrying about that now. Needing a safe home for the boys was a long way further down the road, and much could change before they got there. Perhaps Valens would reappear. Perhaps Pertinax would change his mind. Or die of old age. Or perhaps Gleva would tire of him and curse him too, and he would die of something else. None of these things was under Tilla’s control. For now, all she could do was warn Albanus.

  Two local girls were busy choosing sponges from the basketful on display by the shop entrance, squeezing them tight in their fists and then watching them expand. Tilla stepped into the scented gloom and leaned across the counter. That way, no one could hear her ask whether Virana had warned her husband yet that Gleva might be a danger to the boys.

  Virana had not, but she would do it as soon as he came home. “I will tell him you said so.”

  “That won’t help,” Tilla told her. “Tell him my husband said so.”

  “Did he?”

  “I have already spoken to him about it.”

  “That’s all right, then,” said Virana, and carried on wiping the counter.

  Tilla envied the girl her lack of concern. She tried to reassure herself that, yes, it really was all right. She had indeed spoken to her husband about it. That had not gone well, but only because she had explained it badly. Or perhaps he had not been listening. If he had understood properly, he would surely never have said that the safety of Valens’s family was none of their business. And in any case, he could not feel very strongly about staying out of it, because when she had said, We must find someone whose business it is, he had not objected. How could he? Everyone wanted what was best for the boys. And it was plain that what was best for them was to protect them from Gleva. So when a familiar voice greeted Virana from the doorway and Virana cried, “Husband!” and then, “See? You can tell him yourself!” Tilla knew she must take a deep breath, muster all the persuasion she could manage, and explain to Albanus that they needed to make a plan.